Prestige Records is a

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

record company and label founded in 1949 by

Bob Weinstock Bob Weinstock (October 2, 1928 – January 14, 2006) was an American record producer best known for his label Prestige Records, established in 1949, which was responsible for many significant jazz recordings during his more than two decades o ...

in New York City which issued recordings in the mainstream, bop, and cool jazz idioms. The company recorded hundreds of albums by many of the leading jazz musicians of the day, sometimes issuing them on subsidiary labels. In 1971, the company was sold to

Fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and d ...

, which was later absorbed by

Concord Concord may refer to: Meaning "agreement" * Pact or treaty, frequently between nations (indicating a condition of harmony) * Harmony, in music * Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other ...

History

The Prestige office was located at 446 West 50th Street,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. Its catalogue included Gene Ammons,

John Coltrane John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist, bandleader and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Born and raise ...

Miles Davis Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musi ...

, Stan Getz,

Wardell Gray Wardell Gray (February 13, 1921 – May 25, 1955) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist who straddled the swing and bebop periods. Biography Early years Gray was born in Oklahoma City, the youngest of four children. He spent his early chil ...

Thelonious Monk Thelonious Sphere Monk (, October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including " 'Round Midnight", ...

, and Sonny Rollins. Audio engineer

Rudy Van Gelder Rudolph Van Gelder (November 2, 1924 – August 25, 2016) was an American recording engineer who specialized in jazz. Over more than half a century, he recorded several thousand sessions, with musicians including John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Theloni ...

was the recording engineer of many Prestige albums in the 1950s and early-to-mid-1960s. Prestige created new labels in 1960: Swingville, Moodsville, covering jazz, Bluesville featuring blues revival artists, Lively Arts featuring spoken word recordings and Prestige International, Prestige Folklore, Irish and Near East with folk and world music. By the later 1950s, Weinstock ceased supervising recording sessions directly, employing

Chris Albertson Christiern Gunnar Albertson (October 18, 1931 – April 24, 2019) was a New York City-based jazz journalist, writer and record producer. Early life Albertson was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, on October 18, 1931, but his father left the family b ...

Ozzie Cadena Oscar "Ozzie" Cadena (September 26, 1924 – April 9, 2008) was an American record producer with Savoy Records and Prestige Records who recorded gospel and jazz music in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and helped popularize jazz music in Los Ange ...

Esmond Edwards Esmond Edwards (October 29, 1927 – January 20, 2007) was an American photographer, record producer, and recording engineer. He worked for the jazz label Prestige Records during the 1950s and early 1960s. He was originally hired by founder Bob ...

, Don Schlitten, and producer/music supervisor Bob Porter, among others, to fulfill this function. Musicians recording for the label in the 1960s included

Jaki Byard John Arthur "Jaki" Byard (; June 15, 1922 – February 11, 1999) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer, and arranger. Mainly a pianist, he also played tenor and alto saxophones, among several other instruments. He was known for hi ...

and Booker Ervin, while Prestige remained commercially viable by recording a number of

soul jazz Soul jazz or funky jazz is a subgenre of jazz that incorporates strong influences from hard bop, blues, soul, gospel and rhythm and blues. Soul jazz is often characterized by organ trios featuring the Hammond organ and small combos including ten ...

artists like Charles Earland. In 1966 the company's headquarters were located at 203 South Washington Avenue in

Bergenfield, New Jersey Bergenfield is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 28,321, an increase of 1,557 from the 2010 censuscount of 26,764,Fantasy Records Fantasy Records is an American independent record label company founded by brothers Max and Sol Stanley Weiss in 1949. The early years of the company were dedicated to issuing recordings by jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, who was also one of its invest ...

in 1971, and original releases on the label formed a significant proportion of its

Original Jazz Classics Original Jazz Classics (or OJC) is a record label that founded in 1983 as an imprint of Fantasy Records. Under this name original editions of jazz LPs have been reissued on CD and LP, and formerly on cassette as well. The recordings in the seri ...

line. Fantasy was purchased by

Concord Records Concord Records is an American record label owned by Concord and based in Los Angeles, California. Concord Records was launched in 1995 as an imprint designed to reach beyond the company's foundational Concord Jazz label. The label's artists have ...

in 2005. In 2017, Concord Music Group revived the Prestige label. The first album released under the label's reactivation was ''A Social Call'' from Texas native

Jazzmeia Horn Jazzmeia Horn (born April 16, 1991) is an American jazz singer and songwriter. She won the Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Competition in 2015. Horn's repertoire includes jazz standards and covers of songs from other genres, inclu ...

Discography

References

External links

* – official site *
Prestige
discography at JazzDisco
Prestige Records
on the Internet Archive'
Great 78 Project
{{Authority control American record labels American jazz record labels Bergenfield, New Jersey Jazz record labels Record labels established in 1949